Guest Editorial: Canada a leader in tolerance

Good for Jason Kenney. In a political environment that so frequently descends into polarized hyperbole, it’s nice to see the immigration minister use his time and intelligence to persuade rather than attack. And it’s nice to see anyone call nonsense on some of the ludicrous claims being made about Canada these days.

In a recent op-ed for the British newspaper The Guardian, Kenney responded to an analysis in the same paper by Jonathan Kaiman. Kaiman claimed “there’s trouble brewing in Canada.” He linked the Bank of Canada’s removal of an Asian-looking woman from the $100 bill, the shooting at the Parti Québécois victory party in Montreal, Pauline Marois’ selective secularism and Kenney’s immigration reforms to “a deep-rooted, yet widely ignored undercurrent of racism in Canadian society.”

Widely ignored? All of those stories were big news. The $100 bill design was a mistake and a scandal, which goes to show how intolerable racism is becoming to Canadians. Yes, some of Marois’ policies amount to old-fashioned xenophobic pandering — although it’s worth noting countries in Europe, including the U.K., continue to have public debates about whether to allow face-covering and religious symbols in public institutions. Editorial boards across Canada, including this one, have criticized Marois’ policies in the strongest terms. And Canadians were horrified when two people were shot during Marois’ party, and a suspect hauled away ranting about an imagined Anglo uprising.

To suggest these events are putting Canada’s reputation for tolerance in doubt is a bit rich. When was the golden age when that reputation was forged? Was it the Pearson era, when the great strides this country made toward tolerance included simply removing racist immigration rules that no party would even dream of bringing back today? Was it in the post-Charter 1980s, when same-sex marriage was still illegal, when victims of residential schools went largely unacknowledged and uncompensated, and Sikh RCMP officers were still banned from wearing turbans? Come to think of it, isn’t same-sex marriage still illegal in the U.K.?

Yes, there are serious problems in Canada. There is racism, intolerance, homophobia, xenophobia. But the baseline has shifted from where it was even a generation ago. Much of what we consider ugly and intolerant today would have been considered normal even in the Trudeau era.

And yes, this government has made mistakes, compromised its own principles and set bad precedents — as this editorial board has pointed out many times, on issues ranging from the Omar Khadr case to its response to concerns about the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan. But in Canadian politics, as in Canadian society, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the bar has risen on what’s considered moderate and reasonable.

When Canada’s three federal parties argue about immigration these days, they all take it as a given that immigration is the bedrock of Canada’s culture and economy. No party is calling on Canada to close its doors. They argue mainly about how to treat immigrants fairly in the application process and after they arrive. Not every one of Kenney’s immigration and refugee policies has been perfect or wise. There are valid critiques of the recent changes to refugee health care and to the rules regarding asylum seekers. But Kenney has shown, on occasion, an ability to listen to critics and make changes where warranted. And his overall vision is undeniably pro-immigrant.

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